The Lantern of God

by John Dalmas

  The clockmaker and his workers had no notion of what the clocks were for. All they knew was that they'd been sworn not to tell that they were making clocks for the government.

  Meanwhile Amaadio had found that gleebor excrement was another source of "saltpeter." They'd use nightbird dung as long as it lasted—it was more concentrated—but if the supply ran out, they now had a backup source, pre-dried for easy processing.

  * * *

  Followed by the sloop, the sturdy Karassia entered Hidden Haven and dropped the hook in the middle of the inlet. After unseating her spars and wiring them to cleats, the Karassia's crew was taken to the sloop, and they left the inlet.

  Brokols and Reeno had decided the test should be at night—that's when the actual mining was planned for—so with Juliassa, Torissia, and Jonkka they mounted their kaabors and went riding on the plateau to relax. The military guard detail remained at the hamlet.

  A breeze, cool and dry for the season, ruffled hair and brightened spirits as they rode; meadow flowers bobbed and danced in it. Birds called, swooped, darted at insects. Harriers sailed swift and low, stooped at rodents and rose again.

  They were back in time for supper, then walked down to the beach. The three sullsi had arrived, and K'sthuump, and they waited together till dark, Juliassa asking questions and answering theirs. She was getting to know a lot about the sea people. Finally it was dark. Two of the sullsi (not including Sleekit, whose metamorphosis made his hands less dexterous and his strength greater than representative) swam out with a mine charged with thirty-two pounds of gunpowder.

  They kept well below the surface, and rose beneath the hull. Even their excellent night vision was inadequate, so that they worked by feel and by their inborn sonar. Their short auger started the screw holes without difficulty, and they had no trouble attaching what they hoped was a ship-slayer.

  Then they swam back to shore and, with the humans, lay around for a while; the timer in the mine had been set to allow for difficulties.

  A muffled boom ended their wait. The sullsi hurried out to the Karassia, Brokols and Reeno following in a rowboat with Juliassa. The sullsi dove to examine the hole, and although the ship was settling notably before the humans got there, they boarded her and went below with a lantern to see how flooding was progressing. The hole was five feet wide; water was rising rapidly in the hold. Pumping would have been futile without quick and effective patching, and the ships of the fleet would hardly have patches prepared. Why should they?

  The old schooner was doomed. The humans got hurriedly back into the rowboat and pulled away, then sat and watched the Karassia sink in fifty feet of water. When she disappeared, they exchanged quiet congratulations and hugs, more in relief than exhilaration.

  "Well," said Venreeno, "we've got our ship-slayer."

  "Yes, we do," Brokols answered. It occurred to him that the mines might slay more than ships. Some of the crew members might be below, close to an exploding mine, might be killed, or made unconscious so they'd drown. He felt no dismay at the thought—they weren't his countrymen anymore—and wondered at his lack of feeling.

  Reeno looked at K'sthuump and the sullsi. "Juliassa," he said, "interpret for me. Are any of you familiar with the islands along the Djezian coast, and the first great harbor behind them? We call it Haipoor l'Djezzer, and it's where we expect the fleet to anchor to land the troops."

  All three sullsi, and K'sthuump too, knew the harbor, knew the entire Inside Passage between the islands and the low mainland shore. Both species had well-developed curiosity, and few accessible places were unknown to them. K'sthuump, whose long neck provided an elevated viewpoint, had the best mental images of the place. With their help, Reeno and Brokols began to work out the details of just how the mission would be carried out.

  Fifty-Four

  The distance from Theedalit to the defensive positions at the north end of the Isthmus of Kammenak was some three hundred winding miles. Brokols rode for seven days to get there, and it showered on all but one of them. He'd left Reeno behind to look after the production of mines and grenades, and a youthful lieutenant, Gorrvis Vendorrci, had been assigned as Brokols' aide for the trip. Like Eltrienn, Gorrvis was a native of Kammenak.

  Much of the distance was over rolling plateaus cut deeply here and there by valleys, mostly narrow. The streams were high in that season, and some of the fords worrisome. The isthmus itself was rugged hills—steep longitudinal ridges separated by canyons—and its streams were creeks that in the dry season, Brokols suspected, would become mere trickles or dry up.

  He saw almost no settlement on the isthmus; all the traffic on the rough and rocky roads was wagons with military supplies. The dwellings were mostly huts, according to Gorrvis for herdsmen and the rangy, nipping kiennos that helped move the herds from place to place. Almost all the herds were vehatto; you could hear their plaintive high-pitched cries a mile or more. The land was too steep for decent gleebor pasturage.

  The two men were hungry, saddle-weary, and pungent with sweat when they arrived at regional defense headquarters five miles from the Gorrbian border. A sergeant ushered them into the sprawling command tent and presented them to general Doziellos. The general stood up to greet them and shake Brokols' hand, looking him over with interest. "So you're the one responsible for grenades."

  "Basically. I was familiar with them—we have them in Almeon—and in a general way I knew their construction. An herbalist solved the key problems."

  The general nodded. Brokols wondered what that meant, if anything.

  "The report I was given," said the general, "says you've been an army officer in your own country; that you're to look us over and suggest possible changes we might make."

  "That's right, General. But don't expect too much. I am not a tactical genius. In fact, I was a rather low-ranking officer of cavalry—a senior lieutenant, the executive officer of a squadron."

  Again Doziellos nodded, this time a sharp little nod. "Well," he said, "let's go see how we look to you."

  * * *

  First they visited an advance ridgetop fort. It was a simple strongpoint, its thick walls of dry-laid rock about fifteen feet tall. In front of it the ridge ended, sloping down to an undulating plain and Djez Gorrbul.

  Doziellos and Brokols stood atop a wall, Doziellos pointing. All along the border there were three forts on every ridge top and six in each intervening canyon. Those on the crests were walled on four sides, while those in the canyon bottoms were a single wall across the canyon, with another back about two hundred yards and several more behind that at varying intervals. The canyons were the natural routes up the isthmus. Any attack on the canyon strongpoints would come under fire from one or more of the ridge-top forts. The idea was to deny an invader access up the canyons.

  "Why not bigger walls?" Brokols asked.

  "It's partly a lack of decent building stone," Doziellos explained, "and the difficulty in storming them as they are. The rock around here is pretty rotten. But mostly it's a matter of policy. The intention is less to stop the enemy here than to cost him dearly."

  "How wide is the isthmus?" Brokols asked.

  "For most of its length, from five to six miles."

  "Even with the long haul for building stone," Brokols said, "I'm surprised you haven't built a wall all the way across down there." Brokols pointed to the plain at the toes of the ridges. "Considering how long you've had troubles with the Gorrbians. You could have done it bit by bit, taken a century if you wanted."

  Doziellos grunted. "A thousand years ago we started to. Darrto Pileggri, the principal sage then, warned against it, but he had no military background, and he was ignored. But the Gorrbians didn't like us building it, so before we'd gotten well started, they brought an army and overran it, then drove on up the isthmus. Fifteen weeks later they took Serrnamo, our capital then, and we lived with their heel on our neck for fifty-six years.

  "After our war of independence, we developed the system we have now. The ridgetop forts are
costly to attack; the Gorrbians learned that the hard way, more than once. And they're hard to bypass, because of the canyon strongpoints, while as you can see, the ridge sides are too steep for kaabors; it's hard enough for a man to walk along them. Our archers and arbalesters can shoot anyone that tries.

  "And we have sentries out at night, with kiennos, watching for infiltrators."

  Brokols nodded thoughtfully. Archers like those he'd watched could exact a heavy price. He'd seen men shoot five arrows in ten seconds and put all of them in a straw dummy at sixty yards. He'd seen the same thing tried at 150 yards with two hitting the dummy! "But if the Gorrbians do take one of the ridgecrest forts," Brokols said, "they can direct their own archery at your canyon bottom positions from above."

  "True. If they capture a ridgecrest position, we'd likely pull out of any bottom strongpoints they could fire on. Back from the forts, we'll use ambush, cavalry strikes—whatever's appropriate to the position and strength of the enemy. We've studied and mapped the entire isthmus from this point of view. The function of the strongpoints is to blunt and slow enemy attacks and make them pay heavily. Your grenades will contribute to that. And the dam you saw below the headquarters? We can open it. There's one in each canyon.

  "Yes, we quite expect them to overrun the strongpoints if they have the will."

  Brokols nodded slowly. "I presume you've been told that the Gorrbians will probably have cannon, and what those are like."

  Doziellos nodded. "Yes, and that if they do use such monstrous things, they can hammer our strongpoints to rubble. We'll have to adjust to that if it happens. It may be necessary to abandon our strongpoints early, and fight on the move, though I hope not."

  "Perhaps there's a way to avoid that," Brokols suggested.

  "If there is, I want to know about it."

  "Well then," Brokols said, "here is what you watch for . . .."

  Fifty-Five

  The harvest crew didn't actually stop work to watch. But they paused from time to time, just for a moment, not long enough to anger the field boss, who himself was watching the long train of tawny dust that rose to the north up the road. The scythes missed only a sweep or two at a time, the long-tined wooden rakes no more than a couple of strokes. The women who piled the lenn vines on the many-branched drying poles looked northward for just a breath or two, wiping away sweat with a long sleeve before raising another load on their pitchforks.

  The dust was raised by booted feet, by hundreds of soldiers in a column of twos, carrying light packs. The route was long, and their duffel bags were being hauled on wagons. For Almeon the day was hot and humid, and their officers set a hard pace of four miles an hour. So they sweated, and the dust that rose from their boots formed mud on their faces. Sergeants ranged alongside snapping, shouting to close it up, whacking occasional laggards with their batons.

  They didn't know, most of them, how much farther it was to Lands Harbor, they only knew they'd be glad to get there. Even though it meant going to war. Because the rumor was, they'd be on ships for sixty days, and there'd be no way to drill them aboard ship.

  While at the other end of the voyage—Victory! Victory over the droids, that looked like people but weren't.

  Then, far ahead, an officer bellowed for double-time, and the command was passed along the column. Muttering curses, the troops broke into a trot. Ahead, their road joined another in an inverted "Y," and on the other branch of the "Y," some distance farther back, a column of cavalry had been spotted. The major wanted to reach the "Y" first; that would block the road, and the Dard-cursed riders would have to eat their dust instead of vice versa.

  As the lead company passed the harvest crew, the laborers did stop briefly to watch. So many soldiers! Their field boss shouted then: "Get to work, Dard blast ye! Or I'll uncoil me lash!" They bent again to their labor, a few of the youngest wishing they were off to the droid land as soldiers.

  The cavalry commander saw what was happening, and ordered his troopers to a trot, then a canter, and at the last a gallop. They thundered into the junction not more than three dozen yards ahead of the foot troops, then slowed, while the infantry battalion jammed to a stop. The infantry commander stood glowering at the mounted troops, smelling their sweaty, farting animals and grinding their dust between his teeth.

  Fifty-Six

  The return trip to Theedalit took Brokols and Vendorrci twelve days, five days longer than the trip out. Brokols had taken sick early on the second day out of Kammnalit, puking and shitting, sweating and shaking, and occasionally babbling out of his mind. During his semi-alert periods, the first two days, he wondered if he was going to die. It was over with, though, on the morning of the third. He'd rested on the third and fourth, and would have rested longer, but he had a wedding to go to in Theedalit—his own. Instead, for the first two days back on the road, they'd taken it easy, resting often in the shade, snacking.

  When he'd just begun coming down with it, they'd stopped at a hamlet, where Vendorrci had rented an unused hut and helped the trembling Brokols to bed. Meanwhile a youth had ridden to a village some miles away to bring a master who lived there. Brokols couldn't remember what the master had done, but he had the distinct if subjective impression that the man had saved his life. The people there said that child fever was going around; apparently he'd been infected, and it had hit him far more severely than it did Hrummean children.

  When they got back to Theedalit, he looked and felt pretty much normal, perhaps a little weak. He luxuriated in the hot tub while his houseman took his Hrummean road clothes to a washerwoman. (Brokols never wore Almaeic clothes anymore.) A long night's sleep in his own bed completed his recovery.

  * * *

  He was not allowed to see Juliassa, or allowed in her home while she was there, as was the custom during the week before the wedding. Instead, on the second morning he was taken to a wedding grove to practice the ceremony. In Theedalit there were one or more wedding groves in every park, large or small, and one in the garden of the amirrial palace. The groves were sacred to Hrum, and they were where weddings were held. In each there was a round gazebo about twenty feet in diameter, where the actual ceremony was performed. The gazebos were pillared and without walls, but trellised and vine-grown behind the altar, which was on the west side.

  In an earlier stage of Hrummlis, night had been regarded as the time belonging to Makklith, the female aspect of Hrum in charge of sex and birth. Thus tradition had weddings taking place at dusk, to represent the change from singleness to marriage. The wedding would be presided over by a master, but for Brokols' practice, Reeno Venreeno presided, and Gorrvis Vendorrci stood in for the bride. Beside the altar were two open bronze lamps on tall stands, and a fire was lit in each of them, as during the actual ceremony.

  Venreeno himself had been remarried while Brokols was off in Kammenak.

  There was no set wording for the service. The master would speak as Hrum-In-Him prompted, although the thoughts expressed were custom, and did not vary, however phrased. Reeno said those same things during the rehearsal—reflecting ideas they'd discussed earlier in their talk on being a husband. They practiced the ceremony twice, then Reeno declared it enough.

  After that, Brokols went to his apartment, and with his houseman packed his things. He didn't have a lot; he'd rented the place furnished. Then he had his chests and boxes loaded on a wagon and hauled to a small house near the palace, bought and furnished for the couple by Leonessto. Juliassa's things had already been moved in and arranged as she wanted them. Brokols was leery about moving or even touching any of it, so he had most of his piled temporarily in a storeroom.

  An exception was the wireless; a room had been set aside for it.

  The next morning he went to Reeno's office and got updated on both the grenade and mine projects. Gleebor manure was being used to make saltpeter in quantity now. A large quantity of grenades had already been shipped to Kammenak by boat. Also, a dozen or more mine casings were being built each day, though only a few had
yet been loaded with gunpowder. Production of clocks and trigger mechanisms had been slower, but even so, the current rate of production was predicted to fill their needs, and production was increasing with the experience of the artisans. Three east-coast schooners had been chartered and brought around to transport the mines and personnel, and K'sthuump had assured Juliassa that week that more sullsi were enroute to the islands off Haipoor l'Djezzer than were actually needed.

  Brokols was a bit uncomfortable about the time prediction. After all, it was based on a dream!—the dream he'd had of the fleet leaving Almeon during lenn harvest. It had seemed so real and compelling when he'd dreamed it, but now, in the cold light of logic . . . every time he thought about it, he had a pang of anxiety.